Thursday

May 10, 2018 at 11:27 AMMay 10, 2018 at 11:27 AM

Higher education runs on relationships built outside the classroom. Veteran professors hold private meetings during office hours, lead teams in laboratories and mingle at wine-and-cheese receptions. They aim to connect with students and junior faculty, provide academic guidance, develop confidence and trust.

Too often, women say, men who hold these positions of privilege and power on college campuses have abused that trust.

A growing number of former students and faculty colleagues have stepped forward in recent months to accuse tenured professors of sexual harassment and, in some cases, sexual assault. These women are now demanding a reckoning for long-hidden incidents they say left them scared, scarred and disillusioned. Some of these accounts target eminent faculty at Harvard University, the University of Virginia and other prominent schools.

"He violated me in this horrible way," Seo-Young Chu said of a deceased Stanford University professor who she alleges raped her years ago. "I never really healed completely."

The #MeToo movement, which has rocked politics, media, business and entertainment, is exploding with full force in academia.

For colleges, the intensified scrutiny of professors marks a second phase in a profound shift of thinking about sexual misconduct that began several years ago with a spotlight on sexual violence among students. Schools are scrambling to assure campus communities that they understand the problem encompasses faculty, too.

Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust - the first woman to hold that position - said the #MeToo movement is forcing faculty to rethink interactions with students and colleagues. "If you go out for drinks with the people in your lab, what are the implications of a situation like that?" Faust said.

Professors must ensure their influence is wielded in "an ethical way," Faust said. "We intend to have our faculty be accountable for how they use their power."

Sexual harassment allegations have roiled Harvard this year following a report about a political scientist, Terry Karl, who left the university faculty in the early 1980s after enduring what she called unwanted sexual advances from a more-senior colleague. Harvard found that professor, Jorge I. Dominguez, responsible for "serious misconduct" at the time, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, but he stayed at the university and rose to become vice provost for international affairs. The Chronicle has reported that several more women are now accusing Dominguez of inappropriate conduct. Harvard has pledged a "full and fair review" of the allegations.

Dominguez declined through an attorney to comment but has said he plans to retire this year.

Allegations of professorial sexual misconduct have also surfaced at Dartmouth College, Berklee College of Music and other schools across the country.

Since December, more than 2,400 anonymous accounts of sexual misconduct have been posted online through a spreadsheet in which victims and witnesses describe incidents they say occurred in their work with lecturers, professors, deans and others.

Karen Kelsky, an academic career consultant in Eugene, Oregon, and former anthropology professor, created the forum that she calls a "crowdsourced survey of sexual harassment in the academy." The offenses range from rape and assault to remarks about clothing and appearance that cross the line. Perpetrators are not named, but many schools are.

"I'm really struck by how endemic this is," Kelsky said.

Colleges have long known of the problem, but in recent years have learned more about its prevalence. In 2015, the Association of American Universities surveyed students at 27 prominent research universities about sexual misconduct. It found that 10 percent of female graduate and professional students experienced sexual harassment from faculty.

"We need to be thinking about faculty-student relationships," said Mary Sue Coleman, president of the association. "I want to be perfectly clear about this: Universities are not somehow different from the rest of society. . . . We're talking about culture - deeply embedded culture."

Chu was a graduate student at Stanford in 2000 when, she said, her faculty adviser sexually attacked her.

Jay Fliegelman, a well-known English professor, was later suspended for two years for sexual harassment and misconduct because of his behavior toward Chu, including an incident of "oral-genital contact" at the professor's home after he played a pornographic video, Stanford's general counsel, Debra Zumwalt, told Chu in a November 2017 letter.

Chu described the incident as nonconsensual. Fliegelman disputed that, according to Zumwalt, telling investigators he stopped as soon as Chu indicated she was "not comfortable." Stanford concluded the incident occurred "under circumstances that were extremely inappropriate and in which your assent could be questioned," Zumwalt told Chu.

The university imposed what Zumwalt called a "significant financial sanction" on Fliegelman. At the time, he disputed many of the findings, according to the letter, but apologized for the pain he caused Chu and declared himself "very ashamed."

Chu ended up leaving the university and getting her doctorate from Harvard in 2007. Fliegelman died that year, on the Stanford faculty to the end and celebrated in an official obituary for his scholarship, teaching and rare book collection.

"There isn't a day in my life when I haven't been eaten away by it in some way," said Chu, 40, an associate professor of English at Queens College in the City University of New York.

On behalf of Stanford, Zumwalt expressed sorrow to Chu for her suffering. "You did the right thing by bringing this issue forward in 2000," she wrote, "and we are grateful to you for doing so."

Advocates for male professors accused of misconduct say it can be exceedingly difficult for them to defend their reputations when allegations are aired in public about disputed events that occurred years ago.

"Career-wise, you're shot whether or not the process plays itself out in the university disciplinary arena," said attorney Andrew Miltenberg. He said he represents about a dozen professors accused of sexual misconduct. Universities are doing "a very bad job," he said, at ensuring the accused are treated fairly. "Faculty members have a lot to be afraid of. The damage is very immediate."

Compounding the challenge: Many faculty revel in making provocative remarks about taboo subjects, including sex, and presume tenure and the principles of academic freedom will protect them. Miltenberg said professors are often bewildered at the very notion they could be accused of sexual transgressions. Their attitude, he said, is: "Are you kidding me? I've taught at this institution for 23 years, I estimate 10,000 students have passed through my doors, and now I'm getting a complaint from 2006?"

Rules on sex between professors and students vary from college to college, complicating the issue for higher education.

In 2013, Stanford officials said, their university became one of the first to explicitly prohibit sexual or romantic relationships between undergraduates and faculty and between graduate students and faculty who oversee their work. In 2015, Harvard announced a ban on sex between faculty and undergraduates.

U-Va.'s conflict-of-interest rules stipulate that faculty should "avoid engaging in sexual relationships with or making sexual overtures to students over whom they are in a position of authority by virtue of their specific teaching, research, or administrative assignments." The rules are in a memo dated 1993.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.